Mizoram celebrates New Year with community feasts, church services

Mizoram celebrates New Year with community feasts, church services

Aizawl, Mizoram on Thursday celebrated New Year with religious and traditional fervour, marking it with community feasts and church services.

Mizoram celebrates New Year with community feasts, church services

Thanksgiving ceremony, worship service, prayers and congregational singing were held in churches across the state on Thursday as part of the celebration.

Usually, the New Year is celebrated for two days in the Christian-majority state of Mizoram.

Several churches belonging to different denominations, including the Presbyterian Church of India and Baptist Church of Mizoram , particularly in villages and some small towns, held community feasts on Thursday, while most churches in Aizawl and other towns will hold the same to mark the closure of the New Year celebration on Friday.

All churches in the state held midnight services on Wednesday night to bid farewell to 2025 and welcome the new year 2026.

Some indigenous churches in rural areas also held church services and community feasts on Wednesday to bid farewell to the outgoing year .

On Wednesday, the state Tourism department held a tourism event at Sakawrhmuituai tlang near Aizawl to witness and send off the last sunset of 2025.

State Tourism minister Lalnghinglova Hmar, who attended the event, said the government is making efforts to make Mizoram an appealing tourist destination during winter.

Sometimes, the New Year celebration lasted for more than a week in some local churches.

The government has banned firecrackers, sky lanterns and other pyrotechnic materials to ensure peaceful and pollution-free celebrations.

Bidding the outgoing year and welcoming the new one with a crash-boom-bang celebration has become more or less a tradition for the Mizos to light up moods, though it has no significant relation with the Christian way of celebrating the New Year.

Aizawl Superintendent of Police Zosangliana told PTI that no person has been arrested for bursting firecrackers.

He said that no law and order problem has been reported in the state during the New Year celebration on Thursday.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.